As the speed, and capacity of computers has increased, engineers and developers have relied more frequently on computer based tools to assist them in solving a wide range of problems. In the design automation field, computers are effective tools for organizing complex data, performing complex computations, and representing design data in easily understood formats.
The electronic design automation (EDA) field has produced a number of computer-based design tools to assist in the development of complex electronics. To list a few examples, there are computer-based tools to synthesize, simulate, and test an electronic circuit design. These tools have enabled design teams to decrease significantly the design cycle for complex electrical components.
Even with the array of design tools available to assist the design team, the design problem is still very difficult to manage. Many of today's computerbased design tools only assist in a single step in the design process such as helping design the physical layout of components on a circuit board or simulating the behavior of a circuit design. In most electronic design problems however, there are a number of steps, each potentially involving a number of designers and a large amount of data. In this complex design environment, it is very difficult to track the design steps and to organize the design data generated from those steps. Thus, while today's design tools help developers and engineers perform their design tasks, they do not adequately address the issue of managing the design process as a whole.
Groupware presents an alternative solution for helping designers manage shared data relating to a design problem. Groupware products facilitate the sharing of information in the form of documents among members of an organization. They enable users of computers in a network to edit and view information stored in shared documents.
Though effective at maintaining shared information, current groupware tools do not guide designers through related process steps. Groupware does not allow a designer to define a model for an arbitrary process. More specifically, groupware does not allow a user to describe steps in the process and the dependencies among these steps. In a typical design process, there are a number of steps which must be performed in a particular order. As designers perform these steps, they create or transform design data. Groupware cannot effectively model a design process because it cannot model the dependency among steps, and it cannot manage the creation and transformation of data from process steps.
Apart from groupware, a number of computerbased tools in the EDA marketplace purportedly address the concept of a design process. These design tools fall into one of the following categories: (1) Tool Launchers; (2) Tool Sequencers; and (3) Flow Sequencers.
Tool launchers are understood to provide nothing more than a centralized location for invoking other computer-based design programs.
Slightly more effective than tool launchers, tool sequencers control the order in which a user can invoke a design tool. Tool sequencers, however, are typically only single user tools, designed mainly to guide novice users through a tool set.
Flow sequencers provide a very basic capability to define a dependency between steps in a process. This capability is rather limited, however. Typically, a parent step must complete before a child step can start.
Existing computer-based tools that fall in the above categories suffer from a number of additional drawbacks making them unsuitable for managing complex design processes. Many of these tools are single user tools, which limits their utility in the typical design team environment. These tools fail to allow users to define and modify arbitrary and sufficiently robust models or "templates" of design processes. As such, they provide no means for managing the dependency relationship among steps, or the underlying design data created or transformed during a design step. Finally, existing tools or design tool frameworks known to the inventor are not based on an open architecture, but rather, rely on certain proprietary features of their environment. Therefore, they are incompatible with a number of other computer based tools.
In light of the various deficiencies of existing design tools, there is substantial need for an improved computer-based tool for defining and managing complex processes.